Review: Waking the Witch

Reviewed by Jen

One of the things I love best about the Otherworld series is that time passes in the books pretty much like real-time. The series began back in 2001 and we’ve essentially watched the characters change and grow through 10 years of their own lives. We met Savannah in the 2nd book, as a 12 year-old child and now she’s a 21 year-old woman, serving as the narrator of her very own story. It’s a little hard to see her as an adult, but I think that’s in part to her personality, which is still a little impetuous and self-absorbed. And she is still trying to prove herself.

So when Paige and Lucas go on vacation, Savannah jumps at the chance to take the lead on her very own case. The tip comes from Jesse, a half-demon contact of Lucas’ — and it takes Savannah to a small town to investigate a trio of human murders with a link to the occult. She joins forces with an off-duty cop named Michael, whose sister was one of the victims. I liked him right away. So when Armstrong killed him off, I was crushed. I knew he wasn’t going to be Savannah’s HEA, but I really hated to see him die.

There’s a wide range of suspects: from the strange commune of girls living with a creepy therapist… to the adulterous boyfriend of one of the victims. Links to the supernatural keep popping up, but Savannah can’t quite put her finger on how they’re tied to the case. Savannah’s a tough girl, as we are reminded more than once, but she could have helped herself a lot by reaching out and being honest with her family and friends. It was frustrating to keep watching her make this mistake. The story would have gone very differently if she weren’t so bent on proving herself.

Adam shows up in the second half of the book. We don’t get a romance between him and Savannah, but the groundwork is there. I’m hoping they’ll pursue it in the next book, which is also a Savannah story. The resolution here on the murder/mystery was a huge surprise for me and while that storyline did wrap up, the ending is a pretty big cliffhanger. I enjoyed the book, but I wish we would have had more crossover with the other characters from the previous books. 4 stars.